Week 7 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 17:1-15; Psalm 103; Mark 10:13-16

Today's first reading is another beautiful passage from the Book of Sirach. It gives us a 'theological anthropology', a portrait of the human being illuminated by his relationship with God. The human being is created in the image of God: this is one of the few places between Genesis and the New Testament where this description is found. It means the human being is alive and intelligent, knowing good and evil and having free choice in relation to them. The human being rules over all other creatures because he is reflective, inventive, and understanding. He is spiritual and wise, and ought to know God through the works of creation. So man gives glory and praise to God, lives within the covenant, and has received precepts from God to guide his actions.

There is no suggestion of anything like eternal life here. The human being participates in all these good things as long as he is alive but his days of life are limited and he returns to the earth from which he was made. One thing that pushed Hebrew thought in the direction of resurrection was the frequency with which this serene vision of human life as powerful, knowledgeable, effective, creative, and moral, was known not to be the reality. The equation of such serenity with good living was often subverted by experience: good people, wise and spiritual, did not enjoy good things during the course of their lives, whereas people who chose evil and wicked ways, neglected God's commandments, and failed to praise Him, did well in the course of their lives. Where then was justice? How could God show Himself to be righteous if not through a resurrection, of the good to life (which seems to be simply more of the same, a kind of re-incarnation) and the wicked to judgement.

We must wait for the New Testament to get a clear teaching about the resurrection of the dead. Jesus teaches it many times, speaking of the resurrection of all to judgement, the good to be rewarded for their goodness and the wicked to be punished for their wickedness. We might be tempted now to dismiss this kind of talk as childish. Surely that's the infantile stage of moral development, to think in terms of rewards and punishments? It is true that it can reflect a childish understanding of morality as well as a monstrous image of God. But we are to become like little children, Jesus says in today's gospel. Childlike, not childish, as preachers frequently rush to point out.

Children, if memory serves correctly, do have a strong sense of a parallel world, within or beneath or behind the world available to the senses. Through the looking glass, into the wardrobe, rub the lamp, and another dimension opens up, a magical, supernatural dimension that encircles and contains the reality in which we are living our lives. We are to accept the Kingdom of God like a child. 'I would bring you into my childhood home, and there you would teach me', is one translation of Song of Songs 8:2. 'Like a weaned child on its mother's breast, even so is my soul', says Psalm 131. The mother will forget the child at her breast and have no compassion for it, before I forget you, says the Lord, or fail to show you compassion (Isaiah 49:15-16).

Again today the readings combine to draw us beyond the adult, philosophical, reflectiveness of the Wisdom literature to the radical, colourful, surprising world of the child. That serene and knowledgeable man described in the first reading, dutiful and admirable, is invited to grow up into a new kind of childhood, to be 'born again' as Jesus says to Nicodemus, to return to the childhood home of the one who loves him in order to be taught a new way of being, starting from a new beginning. The resurrected life is not just a continuation of what we experience here, another turn of the carousel. It is new in every way, a new heavens and a new earth, where justice will be at home, where the Eternal Child leads us along everlasting paths of discovery.

Week 7 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 6.5-17; Psalm 119; Mark 10.1-12

Today's first reading is one of the most beautiful celebrations of friendship in the Bible. A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter, a treasure, beyond price, a life-saving remedy. Aristotle says that nobody can live without friends and Thomas Aquinas knows that one of the best remedies for depression is to talk with a friend.

The psalm is a celebration of God's law which, coming after this priase of friendship, we can take as God spelling out for his friends the terms of the friendship he wants to have with them. We might feel that friendship should be unconditional rather contractual but we all know, and the first reading speaks of this also, that friendship needs to be worked at, it needs to be reciprocal and it needs to respect always the common ground shared between the friends.

Like all human realities, friendship will be tested by the things that happen in the course of a lifetime. Its survival is not guaranteed which is why, as long as it endures, a friendship is a great grace, a gift of God.

No friendship needs these things more than marriage because it is the highest form of friendship found among human beings. This is why, from all the relationships of love, friendship and companionship that we experience, it is marriage that serves best as an image of God's friendship with his people, of Christ's friendship with his body, the Church, the community of his disciples. It is why marriage is a sacrament of the Church.

The friend who is a treasure and a life-saving remedy is the one who is faithful. This means persevering through thick and thin, staying with the friend no matter what comes along. Once again it requires reciprocity, that my friend will be ready to engage with me in doing what is needed to keep our friendship alive: taking initiatives, being patient, listening well, revisiting often the common ground on which the friendship is built.

And no ground of friendship is better than a shared love of Christ. One of the great theologians of friendship, Aelred of Rievaulx, says that there are always three in a faithful friendship, the two friends and Christ who holds them together. So too for marriage, as for any enduring friendship.

Let us pray for our friends today and thank God for the faithful friendships he has given us. Let us remember friends who have drifted away or from whom we have drifted away, thanking God for what we once meant for each other and praying for their health and their happiness.

Week 7 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 5.1-8; Psalm 1; Mark 9.41-50

The virtue of hope is highlighted in this Holy Year for which Pope Francis chose the theme 'Pilgrims of Hope'. Life is a journey towards a destination for which we hope. The destination is attained with the help of the one for whom we are hoping. 'To hope for God from God' is a neat summary of what this theological virtue is about.

There are two ways of falling away from hope. One is despair which means giving up hope. Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, depression, sadness, meaninglessness, feeling lost - these are not the full blown vice of despair which, like all sins, requires a conscious and intentional choice. Even suicide, I imagine, expresses a kind of misguided hope that things will be better after it than they are before.

As 'pilgrims of hope' we are called to be witnesses of hope, ready to support as best we can those who are experiencing these kinds of darkness and distress.

The opposite vice to despair is presumption and the readings at Mass today are warnings against this in particular. Our wealth or power are not enough to rely on, the first reading says, and even a certain way of trusting in God can be presumptuous. His mercy is real and infinite, of course, but our sins are also serious and our hope cannot mean overlooking the seriousness of them and their consequences. 'Delay not your conversion to the Lord', the reading says, not just in a finger-wagging kind of way but in order that we might begin to live our lives in as wholesome and as fruitful a way as is possible.

Likewise with the gospel reading. A cup of water given in the name of Christ is enough to ensure our salvation. But such kindness is to be accompanied by a conversion to right living which is determined and radical. Whatever in our lives is holding us back on our journey towards our destination is to be eliminated - hand, foot, eye, it does not matter. We are salt, Jesus says, and must strive to keep our 'saltiness'.

The gift or virtue of hope enables us to walk steadily between these two temptations of despair and presumption. It gives us the freedom to live joyfully and confidently, because God is good and is faithful to his promises. At the same time we are strengthened to live intentionally and seriously. God's love salts us with fire, Jesus says, it purifies, heals, strengthens and preserves us on the journey.

Week 7 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 4:11-19; Psalm 118 (119); Mark 9:38-40

'Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise'. So we were taught as children. The word 'early' is missing from the translation linked to here. It comes near the beginning of today's first reading, 'those who seek wisdom early, will win the Lord's good favour' (Sirach 4:12).

It is not clear whether it means early in the morning or when one is young. It could be the first. One of the striking things about the Wisdom literature is that it is as likely to be concerned with ordinary and banal things as with profound and unusual things. Either way the reader is encouraged to begin the quest for wisdom as soon as possible, earlier rather than later, today rather than tomorrow.

However, there is at first a time of testing or initiation. (We were warned about this already in the first reading of yesterday's Mass.) Time is needed if we are to become accustomed to Wisdom. She plays hard to get, hides her face from time to time, and only gives herself finally to the one who perseveres in the disciplines needed to stay with her. Understanding her ways is not immediate or straightforward, we are not immediately at home with each other. In the translation linked here it says that Wisdom 'walks with (us) as a stranger' and the Revised Standard Version says 'she will walk with (us) in disguise'.

It brings to mind the journey to Emmaus when the disciples, disillusioned by their experience in Jerusalem, are joined in their desolate walk by a stranger. We know it is the Risen Lord, but something prevents them from recognising him. He acts as Wisdom does. So he is with them initially in disguise, as a stranger. He opens the Scriptures to them, giving them knowledge and understanding. He interprets the time of testing that has come upon them, and upon him. They invite him to share their meal but in reality it is he who brings them to his meal, and they recognise him in the breaking of the bread. The meal Wisdom offers her clients is one of the meals that informs our understanding of the Eucharist.

Once they have persevered through this time of testing, the seekers of wisdom possess her as they had not done before. 'She comes straight back to them', Sirach tells us, 'to strengthen and gladden them, to reveal her secrets to them, and to give them knowledge and discernment'. In an unexpected fulfillment of these descriptions of wisdom, Jesus risen from the dead comes straight back to his disciples, to strengthen and gladden them, to reveal his secrets to them, and to give them new knowledge and discernment. This he does in his teaching, in the meals he shares with them, in the participation in his Spirit which he makes possible for them, in the sacramental life of the Church which carries His life to them.

He is the Prophet spoken of in the Law. He is the Messiah spoken of by the Prophets. And he is also the Divine Wisdom spoken of in the Writings and in the Psalms (Luke 24:27, 44).

Week 7 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 2:1-11; Psalm 37; Mark 9:30-37

The first part of today's first reading seems to reflect Stoic values and attitudes. Life will be difficult so be prepared. In adversity be patient and accept whatever befalls you. Good people are refined in the furnace of suffering and humiliation. Why should we act like this? So that we will be wise in all our ways.

But the second part puts it in a distinctively biblical perspective. That means a personal, responsive, perspective. God is not just the impersonal pervading power of the Stoic universe but is personal, creative, waiting. His people can relate to Him in fear and hope, in love and trust. They can expect from God not just the relentless unfolding of an iron fate which they are best advised to adapt to rather than bang their heads against it. But here they can hope for mercy and compassion, acceptance and protection, forgiveness and salvation.

It is quite a different picture of how the universe is governed and, paradoxically, the key to it is the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. For the Stoic it is irrational to fear life, God, the universe, or, it seems, anything at all. These things are as they are, and it is absurd to fear them. Of course human beings experience fear but, so the Stoic says, the intelligent person knows that fear is the result of a misunderstanding, and the virtuous person moves beyond his fears as quickly and decisively as possible.

The Bible on the other hand encourages us to fear the Lord. There are realities greater than ourselves and our own rationality. There are gifts that can be lost, a promise that can be missed, a joy that can pass us by. There is a beauty that would leave us speechless were we to glimpse it, a love that would melt our hearts were we to experience it.

Jesus once more puts the child at the centre of things. The child has not lost a capacity for fear and distress which means it has not lost a capacity for awe and wonder. We can try to be the 'greatest', calm and rational like the Stoic, controlled and undisturbed. But Jesus invites us instead to be like children: impulsive, energetic, responsive, imaginative, fearful, spontaneous, affectionate. The virtues of the Christian life emerge there: faith and trust, hope and prayer, love and compassion. They are the opposite to hardening ourselves against the slings and arrows. They require us rather to soften our hearts and to open them in compassion and mercy.

Week 7 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Sirach 1:1-10; Psalm 93; Mark 9:14-29

My studies in preparation for the priesthood included a course called 'cosmology'. It was only one of a number of strange words we had not seen before but accepted as part of venerable, if sometimes quaint, traditions. At that time the word was not much used in general scientific or popular writings. Now, however, it has come back into vogue: a Google search for 'cosmology' produces almost 14 million hits (in less than half a second!), a search for 'new cosmology' almost 12 million. So we are encouraged to look again at the Bible and Christian traditions through the lens of this term. Recent years have also seen 'the care of creation' being added to the earlier concerns of justice and peace.

Texts such as we find in today's first reading are plentiful throughout the Bible. Each of the great wisdom books contains poems or hymns in praise of the divine wisdom revealed in creation. Besides Sirach 1, read today, there is Sirach 24, Proverbs 8, Wisdom 7-8, as well as Genesis 1 of course, some psalms, and the hymn of the three young men recorded in Daniel 3. The tradition of celebrating the Creator in his creation is found also in the prophets and continues in, for example, Celtic spiritual writings such as the Breastplate of Saint Patrick.

The world of nature, explored in physics, chemistry, biology and the other sciences, reveals a wisdom, intelligence, appropriateness and beauty which, for many, point simply to the Creator. As St Paul says in Romans 1:20, God's 'invisible nature, his eternal power and deity' are 'clearly perceived in the things that have been made'.

The cosmos is wonderful in being seen and this is another aspect of wisdom. It is not just that things are, but that they are known to be as they are, and are admired by some mind somewhere. Wisdom resides not just in the order of things but in the mind that understands and appreciates that order. This is true of the human mind, of course, but is also seen by the Biblical writers as applying first to the divine mind.

God conceives a word or wisdom - 'he created her through the Holy Spirit', our first reading says - and any created mind that knows, understands and appreciates the world shares somehow in the wisdom of this originating source.

The gospel reading tells of a conflict within the creation, a point where creatures are in conflict in a way that is unnecessary and injurious: what can be done about this? We see Jesus then, the Lord of Creation, present within the cosmos, its own originating mind, wise and compassionate in relation to the creation. He heals it and sets it right, smoothing out this particular kink. The possessed boy is caught in a cosmic drama, a place where the natural order has gone awry. This kind of problem, says Jesus, can be rectified only by prayer.

Human ingenuity has found solutions to many problems within the creation and has learned how to harness its resources. But the same ingenuity can lose a sense of the gratuitousness and wonder of creation, can treat it purely materialistically, forgetting its spiritual origin and character. People can come to think of all natural things as inert and meaningless, simply waiting to be discovered and exploited by us.

Coming to it in prayer, however, means retaining a sense of wonder at the world and a sense of respect for its laws and integrity. It stimulates a sense of amazement at the 'all-powerful creator-king and truly awe-inspiring one' and a sense of gratitude for creation's many gifts. Contemplating the cosmos in prayer generates a sense of faith in its symbolic and sacramental character, seeing that it is very good in itself and in its use for our salvation by Christ, in the mysteries of His incarnation.

Week 7 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: 1 Samuel 26.2,7-9,12-13,22-23; Psalm 102; 1 Corinthians 15.45-49; Luke 6.27-38

David’s restraint, as recorded in the first reading, is striking. Saul, who is seeking to kill David, falls into his hands, and yet David does not kill him. This is because he is the Lord’s anointed. There is a third point of reference apart from David and Saul. This third point of reference is God, towards whom David has certain responsibilities that prevent him acting against Saul. He cannot live as if God did not exist, or as if Saul had nothing to do with God or God with Saul.

The teaching of Jesus about turning the other cheek, giving to everyone who begs from you, lending while expecting nothing in return – all this can seem idealistic and quite unrealistic for the rough and tumble world in which we live. Jesus is here sketching the ‘ethics of the kingdom’: where God’s love reigns people will find themselves living in these ways. But, as long as we are living in a fallen and struggling world, many feel that such a way of living remains an ideal beyond human ability. And it is. In ourselves we find the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘last Adam’, the old man and the new man, and the struggle between them is never fully resolved in this life.

But when we love, we find ourselves able to live in the way Jesus asks. Where we like people, are fond of them, and want to remain in friendship with them, we find ourselves turning the other cheek, giving whenever we are asked, and lending without expecting anything in return. It is only where we ‘fall out of love’, or lower our sights from the goal of loving, that we begin to count the cost, measure what we give in terms of what others are prepared to give, and then begin to judge and condemn others.

We are ‘of dust’ and we are ‘of heaven’ and are pulled around as a result. We must look above and beyond the particular situations and relationships in which we find ourselves, to God and His way of loving. God is our ‘third point of reference’. From God we experience forgiveness for ourselves and learn how to be merciful to others.

Week 07 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: James 5.13-20; Psalm 141; Mark 10.13-16

Learning to receive is key to any successful human relationship. This seems to be the message of what Jesus has to say about children. He speaks of receiving them and of receiving like they do. They have no claim to power or status to defend or to confuse the purity of their receiving. Creation itself is such a gift if only we could restore in ourselves the wonder of a child's soul and receive it with the same wonder and joy with which Adam received Eve: At last! Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

Would that we could bring the same cry of joy into our relationship with Christ. He is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bones. And we can imagine him saying the same thing to us: you are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. This is the great grace, the remarkable gift of his coming among us, to be of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. It is a kind of fraternity, even of marriage. And because it is, first and last, a matter of grace or gift, entry into the kingdom he establishes can only be by way of receptivity. This is why it is a kingdom that can only be entered when we become like little children.

For Jesus the children are not unreasonable creatures or objects to be trained, they are persons who receive good things with spontaneity and gratitude, with joy and wonder. By receiving children in the way Jesus did - acknowledging them, respecting them, blessing them - we learn from them how to receive. And so we are made ready for the greater gifts, made ready to join Christ in his kingdom.

Week 07 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: James 5.9-12; Psalm 103; Mark 10.1-12

The image of God is male and female: this is what we learn from the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. She is equal to him. In fact she is in a way superior for she is made not from soil, as the man himself was, but from soil already inbreathed by God's spirit - the living man. Nothing made directly from the soil is satisfactory to the man until the woman appears who is made from him. So she is other than him and at the same time his equal: this at last, he says, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. Between them, therefore, friendship and love are possible, things not possible for the man with any of the other creatures that have been made.

The image of God that the man and the woman constitute together is seen in one way in their shared fertility. Together they generate offspring as God himself (we will learn this much later) generates a Son. They are the image of God also in the possibility of love between persons who are other than but equal to each other. Both terms are important, 'other' and 'equal', though it is sometimes difficult to hold them together in a proper way.

Everybody knows the anxieties about marriage that are raised by the disciples. There is the ideal and there is the reality. Already within the New Testament the question of divorce comes up and whether the ideal reaffirmed by Jesus is too difficult for some, perhaps most, people. 'Hardness of heart' afflicts all human relationships and marriage is no exception. In fact because of the intimacy involved, sensitivity is heightened and the consequences of a hardening of the heart is therefore all the greater.

At the beginning, it was not so, Jesus says. In the future, it will not be so. But what about now, the present moment, in these present conditions of human life? Learning to receive is key in every relationship and it is what Jesus will speak about tomorrow, when he moves on to speak about children.

For now we can say this: nobody enters properly into marriage with the thought that it might end. The desire and the intention is that it will continue forever. If somebody were to enter into marriage without that desire or without that intention then it would not be a marriage at all. But still things can go wrong. People may be incapable of living up to the responsibilities that go with it. People may be lacking in understanding or freedom at the moment in which they enter into it. People may experience of a hardening of their heart for one reason or another, a situation that makes it seem impossible for them to continue in relationship with another person.

So it is, and the Church seeks to respond to such situations with justice and compassion, while continuing to promote the gift of marriage which, Jesus says, is the desire and intention of God for his human creatures.

Week 07 (Year B) Sunday

Readings: Isaiah 43:18-19, 21-22, 24-25; Psalm 40 (41); 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12

Jesus is at home and people are seeking him out. How do we have access to him? What if we need to be carried to him, to be brought into his house? Is it easier to say it all happens at some kind of spiritual (= invisible) level, than to say 'wait and you will see paralysed people walking again'? (As a schoolboy I thought it was more difficult to say 'your sins are forgiven' than to say 'arise and walk' on the grounds that a spiritual healing was more radical than a physical one, sin a more recalcitrant obstacle to divine grace than physical illness.)

The first reading encourages us to regard the paralysed man in the gospel as 'Israel', and so as the Church, ourselves. This is - we are - the burden God has chosen to carry. And both are weary: God is tired carrying Israel and Israel is tired being carried. Where might fresh energy and joy come from? Cardinal Ratzinger had much to say about this twelve years ago or so: a tiredness in the Church and with the Church, a tiredness in life - in this culture of leisure in which so many people are tired. Perhaps things are different now. But God can 'do a new thing', Isaiah says, and the paralysed man getting up immediately, taking up his bed, and walking home in front of everybody, is a great example of new energy and joy.

The forgiveness of sins is not just a decision by God to forget the past but God's creation of a new future - not just cancelling out a 'bum note' but making it to be the first note in a new symphony. (The image is Fulton Sheen's: I heard him using it in Dublin in, I think, 1966.) The one who was lying prostrate is not just sitting up, not just standing up: he's walking! Grace, we are taught, is not just healing but also elevating. God's affirmation and re-affirmation of His creation gets it going again, heals its ills, but also fills it with new life.

The scribes are not impressed and find this too intimate, too physical a contact between God and the people, blasphemous. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Who can come into the hearts of God's people but God alone? (A contemporary version of that might be: 'I believe in Christ of course but you can keep the Church. Why should I trust these unreliable and unsteady people to have anything to do with my relationship with God?')

One commentator suggests that the four men who carried the paralytic into the presence of Jesus were Peter, Andrew, James, and John, fresh from their call to follow him and to be with him in his work. When we are told that Jesus is 'at home' it is Peter's house that he has made his home. This suggestion may be fanciful but there are others that cannot be denied: the man has to be carried by other people into the presence of Jesus, and seeing their faith (not his) Jesus begins to act. We are never isolated individuals in this relating to God, but belong to a people, depend on a community.

The point is made clearer by the fact that we have this second reading from 2 Corinthians. God's 'yes' is carried into the creation by Jesus and is continued in history by the Church. That second reading talks about the work of Christ, our worship of God 'through Christ' in the great 'Amen', the effect in us of baptism and confirmation: that we are christened, that we have a standing in Christ (as the Jerusalem Bible puts it), because we have been sealed with the Spirit, given a guarantee in our hearts.

But we cannot be part of any of that except in the Church and through the Church. It would be easier to say 'these things happen spiritually, invisibly'. But that we might know what is going on, and that we might see God active among His people, the 'yes' of Jesus reaches us through the Church. (The visible is more difficult to believe than the invisible!) We might at times resent that, find it incredible, blasphemous even - who can forgive sins but God alone? But ours is not a (purely) spiritual religion - our hope is that God's grace finds its way to transforming not just our hearts and minds but our bodies too, including that body which is the Church, and that body which is the human community and for which the Church exists.

The words are addressed directly to us also: 'get up, take up your bed, and walk'.